Built in six months, this Arts and Crafts-inspired retreat makes a dramatic addition to a West Virginia mountaintop.

Harmony between the natural and man-made worlds was a guiding principle of the late-19th-century Arts and Crafts movement, a tradition carried forward into the Country Living 2009 House of the Year. Thanks to a generous use of stone, red cedar, and exterior colors inspired by mountain skies and meadows, the home adapts with brawny simplicity to its surroundings in the West Virginia mountains. Even the shape of the home owes something to the immediate environment. Presented with a narrow, steeply sloped parcel, designer-builder Tom Tretheway broke from tradition and built upward rather than horizontally. "I wanted to mimic the red spruce, which grows tall and linear," he says.

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The result is a 3,022-square-foot home that appears three stories high at street level but four stories at the back. "The bedrooms aren't huge because I wanted to push people to the extremities of the house, to live upstairs with the doors wide open, or out back on the patio or the lawn," says Tom Tretheway.

With this project, Country Living opened a few doors of its own. Joining editors Robin Long Mayer and Rebecca Thienes to decorate the house was Carol Rublein — winner of the magazine's first guest decorator contest — who designed the home's master bedroom.

Check out the hour-long special Country Living House of the Year 2009, on the DIY Network, January 15, 18, and 22. Amy Matthews, a licensed contractor and host of the DIY Network's program Sweat Equity, gives a tour of the House of the Year build site, spotlighting some of the easy, high-impact design and renovation projects. See your local listings for airtimes.